Stopping US-NATO takeover of Ukraine and Russia

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If one wants to know why the modern Russian state and the Russian people are so averse to war, just take a look and the following charts.

Conservative estimates for Soviet deaths in the Great Patriotic War/Second World War are just over 26 million. Other scholars take the aggregate total of deaths including those who died from starvation and disease at around 40 million.

Between 1941 and 1945, more Russian mothers had to bury their sons than any other group of mothers in the world and that’s just the mothers who themselves didn’t die during the war.

Every Russian person alive today either knows or is related to someone who fought in the Great Patriotic War. It is why on the 9th of May, every year, everyone from Vladimir Putin to ordinary people march in The Immortal Regiment to honour their loved who were veterans of that war whether they died in battle or after.

With this in mind, is it any wonder that Russians do not share the same zeal for war as those who have numerically and dare I say emotionally, not experienced the hell of war as sharply and as painfully?

It is as easy and as disgusting for alt-media trolls sitting behind their laptops to talk about Russia ‘lobbing nukes’ to show America Russia means business as it is for cretins like fake news merchant Brian Williams to call an unprovoked missile attack which killed innocent people ‘beautiful’.

This is why it should come as no surprise to anyone that First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council’s Committee on International Affairs Vladimir Jabarov has said that, “We cannot be dragged into a military confrontation as it could lead to a large-scale war”.

People like John McCain may just be crazy enough to want a war between superpowers, but hardly any Russians are.

In spite of this, many in the nominally pro-Russian alt-media seem to salivate at the concept of Russia engaging with the United States in a Third World War.

Copying aggressive, militant and preemptive neo-con strategies, only under a Russian flag, is not the solution to the mess that Donald Trump has created in Syria, nor is it what any mainstream Russian politician wants whether President Putin or opposition leaders Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Gennady Zyuganov. Contrary to inaccurate reports, the Russian government and main opposition leaders are speaking with a generally unified voice; one that is calm but stern, angry and prepared but not vengeful nor fanatical.

The Russian view boils down to this: maintain close and indeed closer cooperation with Syria, bolster Syria’s defences and be prepared for the worst with the knowledge that Syria and her legal allies do have the legal right to retaliate against any aggression on a sovereign state.

At the moment, that aggression mostly comes in the form of foreign terrorist proxies of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Britain, France and America. It also includes Turkish soldiers who Russia has not engaged with in battle and Israeli aircraft which Syria has engaged militarily but Russia has not.

Russia wants to avoid escalating the conflict at any cost, but is nevertheless prepared and quietly preparing for things to get worse all while working hard diplomatically to make sure things might get even a little better.

If Russia could resist the temptation to start another Russo-Turkish war in Syria, it follows that they will now try to resist a new Cuban Missile Crisis in the Middle East and one without the happy ending at that.

This explains Russia’s calm and quiet approach to the new unknown realities of American foreign policy in Syria.

As much as many would like Russian foreign policy to be as unpredictable, imperious and rash as that of the United States, this would be foolish. One doesn’t fight madness with madness.

Russia understands this, many people who fail to understand Russian history and culture do not.

Since Fort Russ readers rather well know the situation prevailing in Donbass, I’ll take the liberty of refraining from regurgitating facts and details. Instead, I dedicate today’s commentary to two unfolding events in and around Donbass. I base my commentary on media sources, social networks in the DPR and Ukraine, and on insider information I receive from Donetsk – Dr. Eduard Popov

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The military situation in the Donetsk People’s Republic

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Battles have not quieted down since January 29th. The Ukrainian Armed Forces’ tactic of gradually seizing neutral territories (“creeping offensive”) appears to have highly infatuated Ukrainian officers and patriots in the rear and is now taking on a life of its own. The result has been that the Ukrainians have convinced themselves that Donbass forces are weak and therefore decided to undertake a massive offensive. This is a fatal mistake.

According to reports from sources in the DPR, the republic’s army has suffered heavy losses. Alexander Zhuchkovsky has reported dozens of killed. But the UAF and neo-Nazis’ losses are several times higher. Today, the DPR’s intelligence services intercepted and published a secret report by the ATO headquarters for President Poroshenko. The total number of casualties among the UAF over the past two days of firefights is estimated at 78 dead and several dozen wounded. Let me draw your attention to the fact that we are talking about the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers that have been recovered and taken to the morgue in nearby and far-off cities. The number of bodies that weren’t recovered from the battlefield while under artillery fire, the number of bodies completely destroyed by the explosion of military vehicles (tanks, volley artillery, etc.), and the number of wounded still in hospitals – these figures remain unknown. The real figures of the irreversible losses of the UAF over the past two days of fighting are probably no less than 100 men.

As Zhuchkovsky and DPR fighters themselves have reported, the Ukrainians have been surprised by the stiff resistance put up by the republic’s forces. Hitherto, the DPR army had heartbreakingly refused to respond “eye for an eye” to the UAF’s provocative fire. On January 29th and 30th, however, Donbass’ artillery finally put in heart and soul and laid down a “whirlwind of fire” (Zhuchkovsky’s expression) on Ukrainian positions.

The general result: although the situation in the combat zone is complex and fraught with escalation and large losses, overall it is going well for the Donbass republics.

Thus, political conflict in Ukraine moves to the fore.

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Poroshenko’s gamble

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As Ukraine’s military adventure fails, Poroshenko is starting to playing a diplomatic gamble. Poroshenko’s efforts on January 31st fit into this formula. First, he urgently interrupted his visit to Germany and meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Then he called to convene the Tripartite Commission (the “Normandy Four” minus Russia). The Ukrainian foreign ministry today issued a statement which routinely accused Russia of escalating the conflict in Donbass. Without a doubt, soon will follow a Ukrainian appeal to the UN and other international organizations.

But I’m not going to talk about the stupidity of such speculations. Even Ukrainian officers admit that the offensive was undertaken by the Ukrainian side. Russia does not benefit (especially not now) from an escalation of the situation in Donbass. The only beneficiary is the ruling Ukrainian regime.

According to his press service’s official statement, Poroshenko was forced to urgently return to Ukraine to address the “humanitarian situation” in Avdeevka which, let us note, occurred as a result of none other than the Ukrainian army’s adventurous actions on Poroshenko’s orders.

The situation in Avdeevka and the massive losses that the Ukrainian army is incurring nevertheless give the Ukrainian president an occasion to play the role of the victim and cry to the world (the West) to punish the offender (Russia). If the UAF had not met such tough resistance on its attack and if the offensive had gone deep into the republics of Donbass, then Poroshenko would simply conjure another formula justifying Ukraine and blaming Russia. To be more precise, such a formula has long since been hatched and is waiting its turn.

The main actor for whom this whole bloody spectacle is being played is US President Donald Trump. We’ve already repeatedly written for Fort Russ on how Poroshenko is attempting to provoke a war in Donbass in order to prevent normal dialogue between the US and Russia. Allow us to recall the content of one of our articles, in which my sources in the DPR’s military circles forewarned that they expect a massive UAF offensive just before or immediately after Trump’s inauguration.

Poroshenko’s regime is practically at a stalemate on both the international and domestic political fronts. Before the new team of American diplomats appointed by Trump starts working and Trump’s new European policy principles swing into action, Poroshenko will try to win over the American president. His method? By literally producing the fait accompli of “pro-American” Ukraine (in reality, pro-liberal and “pro-democratic”) needing support in Donbass. The Americans call this trick “wag the dog.”

Donald Trump has barely had time to settle into the office of US President, yet his name has already started to bear fruit in Donbass. I believe that the consequences of this factor will be devastating – if not for Ukraine, then for the ruling Poroshenko regime.

Russia’s defense ministry has reported that Russian military advisor and colonel Ruslan Galitsky has died from wounds sustained during the shelling of a residential bloc in Aleppo by militants from the so-called “opposition.”

The ministry said that military doctors fought for several days to save the officer’s life, but were unsuccessful. It was also noted by the ministry that Galitsky was part of a group of advisers fulfilling assignments in Syria. Russia’s command has posthumously presented Colonel Galitsky with the highest state award.

On Monday, the news came that militants had shelled a Russian mobile hospital in Aleppo, as a result of which two military medics were killed and a doctor was severely injured. Civilians being received for treatment also suffered.

The Ministry of Defense has called the attack on the hospital “planned murder,” the responsibility for which lies with the so-called “moderate opposition” and its patrons in the West.

At least seven civilians died and 25 more were injured as terrorists fired shells, some containing toxic gas, at Aleppo, local health officials said as cited by Syria’s official SANA news agency. The shelling occurred amid an ongoing humanitarian crisis in the city.

A terrorist attack on the Old City of Aleppo on Tuesday with “shells containing toxic gas” led to the death of five and suffocation of eight more civilians, the outlet quoted the city’s health director, Mohamad Hazouri, as saying.

A local police source told SANA that terrorist groups fired rocket shells on the al-Hamadaniyeh neighborhood, injuring six. They also targeted the Salah-Eddin neighborhood, killing two and injuring 11 more.

The Russian Reconciliation Centre in Syria said on Tuesday evening in a statement that Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Al-Nusra Front terrorists were continuing to shell residential areas in Aleppo and Damascus.

“During the day in the province of Aleppo, terrorists fired mortars at the town of Ansar and two heights in the surrounding area, [and the] neighborhoods [of] Hai al-Ansari, Leramon, al- Khalidia and a shopping center “Castello” in the city of Aleppo were also targeted,” the statement reads.

The violence comes amid a dire humanitarian crisis in Aleppo which “is on the verge of running out of food and other essential supplies,” a recent statement by Amnesty International said.

Last week the Russian defense minister announced that “safe passages” would be created to let civilians flee the battle zone. Opposition fighters willing to “lay down arms” were also promised amnesty by Syrian government forces.

On Tuesday the Russian Center for Reconciliation in Syria dispatched a convoy containing 18 tons of aid to Aleppo from the Russian Khmeimim air base.

“Servicemen of the Russian center for Syrian reconciliation sent food and essentials in a humanitarian convoy to temporary storage warehouses in Aleppo,” the statement said. The goods included personal hygiene equipment and medicine to be utilized by the ill or wounded.

On Monday a Russian Mi-8 transport helicopter was downed while coming back from a humanitarian aid mission to Aleppo. The incident happened as the chopper was flying over the neighboring Idlib province. Three crew members and two officers onboard died.

General Sergey Rudskoy, chief of the main operations department of the Russian General Staff said that terrorists from Al-Nusra Front but also forces seen as “moderate opposition” by Washington operate in the area.

The Obama Administration has reversed its position on which countries will be included in its upcoming estimate of the civilian deaths caused by the US drone program, according to a report in yesterday’s Washington Post.

Earlier this week, a report in the Post – based on briefings from anonymous Administration officials – stated that strikes taken in Pakistan by the CIA would not be included in the numbers. However, an article in yesterday’s Post – also based on anonymous US government sources – now suggests that the White House has changed its position, and will include strikes taken in Pakistan in its tally.

The exclusion of Pakistan would have meant that as many as two-thirds of known US drone strikes – including some of the worst reported errors – would have been left out of the US tally of deaths. Strikes in Pakistan have included an attack on a funeral in June 2009 that killed as many as 50 civilians, and a strike on a meeting of tribal elders in March 2011 that killed 41. Pakistan has reportedly seen the use of some of the most controversial aspects of the US drone program, such as ‘signature strikes’, where individuals are targeted on the basis of patterns of behavior.

The absence of the Pakistan numbers would also have avoided any need to address controversial claims made in June 2011 by John Brennan, now Director of the CIA. At the time, Brennan said that no civilians had been killed during a yearlong period from 2010 to 2011. However, in August that year, he altered his position slightly, saying there was no “credible evidence” of such deaths. The Administration has never publicly disputed or corrected his statement.

Recent research by the human rights organization Reprieve – which assists the civilian victims of drone strikes – has found that the US is frequently unable to identify those killed by covert strikes in countries including Pakistan and Yemen. Reprieve has found that, in targeting 41 named individuals, US strikes killed 1,147 unknown men, women and children – often leaving the original target still alive.

Commenting, Jennifer Gibson, staff attorney at Reprieve, said:

It’s been three years since President Obama promised long-overdue transparency over the most dangerous legacy of his Presidency – a drone programme that has reportedly killed thousands in countries where the US is not at war. In that time, we have been inundated with repeated and contradictory claims about the program from ‘anonymous’ sources who cannot be held accountable for their claims.

This week, the Administration’s spin machine was once again in action, first leaking that the government’s numbers would not include Pakistan – a country that accounts for three-quarters of all strikes – and then absurdly walking back that position. Enough panicked legacy spinning – the Administration must reveal the true scale of the civilian deaths it has caused, and at the very least, offer an apology to the victims.

If the bombing occurs when the bombs that have been dropped from U.S. airplanes explode, then the United States just bombed Germany and has been bombing Germany every year for over 70 years.

There are still over 100,000 yet-to-explode U.S. and British bombs from World War II lying hidden in the ground in Germany. Notes the Smithsonian Magazine:

“Before any construction project begins in Germany, from the extension of a home to track-laying by the national railroad authority, the ground must be certified as cleared of unexploded ordnance. Still, last May, some 20,000 people were cleared from an area of Cologne while authorities removed a one-ton bomb that had been discovered during construction work. In November 2013, another 20,000 people in Dortmund were evacuated while experts defused a 4,000-pound ‘Blockbuster’ bomb that could destroy most of a city block. In 2011, 45,000 people—the largest evacuation in Germany since World War II—were forced to leave their homes when a drought revealed a similar device lying on the bed of the Rhine in the middle of Koblenz. Although the country has been at peace for three generations, German bomb-disposal squads are among the busiest in the world. Eleven bomb technicians have been killed in Germany since 2000, including three who died in a single explosion while trying to defuse a 1,000-pound bomb on the site of a popular flea market in Göttingen in 2010.”

A new film called The Bomb Huntersfocuses on the town of Oranienburg, where a huge concentration of bombs keeps up a constant menace. In particular the film focuses on one man whose house blew up in 2013. He lost everything.Oranienburg, now known as the city of bombs, was a center of nuclear research that the U.S. government did not want the advancing Soviets to acquire. At least that’s one reason offered for the massive bombing of Oranienburg. Rather than possibly speed up the Soviet acquisition of nukes by a handful of years, Oranienburg had to be rained on with blankets of enormous bombs — to explode for decades to come.

They weren’t just bombs. They were delayed-fuse bombs, all of them. Delayed-fuse bombs were usually included along with non-delaying bombs in order to terrorize a population further and hinder humanitarian rescue operations after a bombing, similar to how cluster bombs have been used in recent U.S. wars to extend the terrorizing of a population by blowing up children for months to come, and similar to “double taps” in the business of drone murder — the first missile or “tap” to kill, the second to kill any rescuer bringing aid. Delayed-fuse bombs go off some hours or days after landing, but only if they land the right way up. Otherwise they can go off some hours or days or weeks or months or years or decades or god-knows-when later.

Presumably this was understood at the time and intended.

So, that intention perhaps adds to the logic of my headline above. Perhaps the United States didn’t just intend to bomb Germany, but it intended 70 years ago to bomb Germany this year.

A bomb or two goes off every year, but the greatest concentration is in Oranienburg where thousands and thousands of bombs were dropped. The town has been making a concerted effort to find and eliminate the bombs. Hundreds may remain. When bombs are found, neighborhoods are evacuated. The bomb is disabled, or it is detonated. Even during the search for bombs, the government must damage houses as it drills test holes into the ground at evenly spaced intervals. Sometimes the government even tears down a house in order to conduct the search for bombs beneath it.

A U.S. pilot involved in this madness way back when says in the film that he thought about those under the bombs, but believed the war to be for the salvation of humanity, thus justifying anything. Now, he says, he can see no justification for war.

Also in the film, a U.S. veteran writes to the Mayor of Oranienburg and sends $100 to apologize. But the Mayor says there’s nothing to be sorry for, that the United States was only doing what it had to. Well, thanks for the codependency, Mr. Mayor. I’d love to get you on a talk show with Kurt Vonnegut’s ghost. Seriously, Germany’s guilt is immensely admirable and worthy of emulation in the guilt-free United States, which grotesquely imagines itself forever sinless. But these two extremes build on each other in a toxic relationship.

When imagining that you’ve justified a war involves imagining that you’ve thereby justified any and every atrocity in that war, the results are things like nuclear bombings and bombings so intense that a country remains covered with unexploded bombs at a time when almost nobody involved in the war is alive anymore. Germany should strengthen its peace-identity by shaking off its guilt-ridden subservience to the United States and putting an end to U.S. warmaking from bases on German soil. It should ask the U.S. military to get out and to take all of its bombs with it.

Americans may think they are safe but they are not. There are many of these labs in the United States, and the US government has conducted experiments on Americans with biological, chemical, EMF, and radioactive substances and weapons.

The epidemic of an artificial strain of flu was deliberately released from the USA bacteriologic lab in Kramatorsk. This was reported by sources among the doctors of the town who spoke to blogger Viktor Peshkov.

“In the area of Kramatorsk there is bacteriologic laboratory belonging to the USA. There was a leak, of the virus H1N1, so-called Swine flu, but it has menacing potential, as there was a leak of the virus causing fulminant of severe pneumonia. Very often the carriers of virus have them both. In the beginning it affected Ukrainian soldiers en masse, DPR intelligence reported that bodies were just left in the snow and nearly 40 bodies were taken from a single unit. Then it spreaded to the front line. The situation is very difficult” – he wrote on his page on LiveJournal.

“All the doctors are aware of what they are facing. These are artificially derived viruses!

Now the specifics. I recommend right now to take a double dosage of vitamin C and ‘ингавирин’ for prevention – 1 dose per week. When your temperature rises above 38 degrees, start taking a dose of ‘ингавирин’ per day. If on the third day your temperature drops – URGENTLY GO TO THE DOCTOR. With this disease it is impossible to recover from it without treatment from powerful anti-virus drugs. 4 – 6 days without treatment, the individual falls into a delusional state, fluid fills the lungs and they collapse, the agony, a corpse. A lot of deaths in Novorossia, and a decent amount in St. Petersburg, for example, one hospital I know has about 6 dead bodies. Humans burnt out. The weaker the immune system the faster the process, there were cases of disease to death in only three days” – said Viktor.

Recall, as was previously reported by Novorosinform, similar assumptions were made by the Deputy of the state Duma and the Deputy commander of the DPR corps, Eduard Basurin.

One of the first reports about the use of this strain of the virus as a biological weapon was our own investigation, “Geopolitics of the flu. Russian field experiments”, said our editor of publications – Ruslan Lyapin.